Africa is not where we should worry about the next plague coming from.... and you will never guess where it is...

I found Joseph's post interesting so I delved a bit deeper into his whole viral vaccine question because I found this interesting. So his point was that because viruses are so small they are hard to study. Well that may have all changed because of a recent discovery in Siberia-the world's largest virus. This virus called Pithovirus is 1.5 microns wide-or large enough to be viewed by a regular microscope. Pithovirus naturally infects amoebas. However, despite being harmless to humans Pithovirus has a scary side-it is 30,000 years old. That's right, feel free to go back and reread this virus has not only been alive in 30,000 years, it has been frozen in an amoeba in the Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years. Worst yet, french scientists were able to thaw it out, alive and it has been active. This has severe implications. It has proven that if you melt a chunk of permafrost down you might release the next plague. This answers another one of Joseph's questions. No I do not think the next plague will come from the jungles of Africa, I think it will come from the barren lands of the Arctic Circle.